Years ago I worked as the Bristol City Council Lead Trainer for the Common Assessment Framework (CAF). I, together with a large team of co-trainers, were tasked with delivering training in CAF and a range of other brand new safeguarding initiatives to thousands of professionals across Bristol. CAFs were designed help families get the support they needed at …
A couple of weeks ago I delivered my course on Effective Supervision. To be honest, despite having delivered this session dozens of times in the past to project managers and social workers at Bristol City Council, it’s been many years since I’ve actually been called to deliver it, as there hasn’t been much demand. This …
As I enter a school I see a really lovely colourful display entitled ‘Fundamental British Values’. There are the headings – Democracy, Rule of Law, Individual Liberty and Mutual Respect and Tolerance for different faiths and beliefs – and posters and quotes from children about what these ideas mean to them in real life. Interestingly, …
My Safeguarding: Basic Awareness training courses now all set out a list of interesting and important Serious Case Reviews (SCRs) that I advise participants to read and to which I make copious reference to during the training. All SCRs can teach us a tremendous amount about good and poor practice. Ultimately a SCR can teach …
Results from a recent survey (Adoption UK, published November 2017) suggest that adopted children are 20 TIMES more likely to be permanently excluded than their peers. These figures are clearly a huge cause for concern. But what is going on for many of these children at school that’s leading schools to exclude them? The crux of …
Schools and other settings tell me a lot of their work around safeguarding is taken up with dealing with allegations made by children about other children. Recent headlines have informed us that peer abuse is rising. Last year it was reported that almost 30,000 reports of children being sexually assaulted by another child have been …
On 14 December 2017, the Department for Education released two safeguarding guidance documents. One was the consultation for the new revised version of the statutory guidance ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ for September 2018, the other is non statutory guidance entitled ‘Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment between children in schools and colleges’ (or what can …
I often repeat the phrase during training that ‘People who seek to sexually abuse children will seek work which means they have increased access to children.’ Part of creating a culture of vigilance means ensuring that all the pre-employment and ongoing checks we carry out on staff and volunteers are carried out as a matter …
This week I am hearing continually on the news about the steep rise in numbers of people living in poverty in the UK – high rates of extreme poverty which are affecting millions of families with children right now. While I do talk about this on my training, often any reference to the relationship to …
My very experienced social worker colleagues have told me that changes to national laws and guidance in relation to safeguarding used to be expected every 10-15 years. Nowadays, as I like to share on my safeguarding training, the pace of change has vastly increased and major reviews of legislation and/or key guidance now occur with …
